Various embodiments relate to imaging methods, devices, and systems and more particularly to automatic color balancing techniques for imaging methods, devices, and systems.
Solid state imagers, including charge coupled devices (CCD), CMOS imagers and others, have been used in photo imaging applications. A solid state imager circuit includes a focal plane array of pixel cells, each one of the cells including a photosensor, which may be a photogate, photoconductor or a photodiode having a doped region for accumulating photo-generated charge. Each pixel cell has a charge storage region, formed on or in the substrate, which is connected to the gate of an output transistor that is part of a readout circuit. The charge storage region may be constructed as a floating diffusion region. In some imager circuits, each pixel cell may include at least one electronic device such as a transistor for transferring charge from the photosensor to the storage region and one device, also typically a transistor, for resetting the storage region to a predetermined charge level prior to charge transference.
In a CMOS imager, the active elements of a pixel cell perform the necessary functions of: (1) photon to charge conversion; (2) accumulation of image charge; (3) resetting the storage region to a known state; (4) transfer of charge to the storage region; (5) selection of a pixel cell for readout; and (6) output and amplification of a signal representing pixel charge. Photo charge may be amplified when it moves from the initial charge accumulation region to the storage region. The charge at the storage region is typically converted to a pixel output voltage by a source follower output transistor.
CMOS imagers of the type discussed above are generally known as discussed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,140,630, U.S. Pat. No. 6,376,868, U.S. Pat. No. 6,310,366, U.S. Pat. No. 6,326,652, U.S. Pat. No. 6,204,524 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,333,205, assigned to Micron Technology, Inc., which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.
Color constancy is one of the characteristics of the human vision system. The human vision system is very capable of discriminating color objects under different lighting conditions. The color of an object looks substantially the same under vastly different types of natural and artificial light sources, such as sun light, moon light, incandescent, fluorescent, and candle light. However, due to the change in the spectral power distribution of the illumination, the perceived lightness and color appearance of the scene will change. The human vision system does not remove the influence of the light source completely.
A possible explanation is that the human vision system does not function as an absolute colorimetric device. The perceived images contain interactions of light sources and object reflectance. Therefore, for a captured image from an imaging device to look natural, the influence of the light source must be preserved in a manner similar to the way the human vision system functions. For example, the reproduced sunset scene must look like a sunset scene. This hypothesis is supported by R. W. G. Hunt's observation that a more pleasing effect is often produced in color prints if they are so made that instead of the color balance being correct, in which gray is printed as gray, it is so adjusted that the whole picture integrates to gray. R. W. G. Hunt, “The Reproduction of Colour” §16.7. The gray world theory assumes that all of the colors in a picture should integrate (i.e. average) to gray. Accordingly, there is a need and desire for an imaging device that more accurately color balances a captured image.